encryption

This law would really leave us defenseless

You have to admit that the US government has a pretty dismal record when it comes to computer security.

In just the last year, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revealed that hackers had stolen the personal information of more than 20 million current and former federal government applicants and employees. The stolen data included more than six million fingerprints – considered the “gold standard” for proof of identity.

If that wasn’t enough, the IRS acknowledged it also had suffered a massive data breach, with hackers stealing information of more than 300,000 taxpayers to claim more than $50 million in bogus refunds. And just a few months later, the IRS admitted that the system it used to identify taxpayers electronically had itself been hacked!

While I don’t consider myself an expert on computer security, I can tell you the steps I would take if an organization I ran suffered breaches of this magnitude. The first thing I would do is pull the plug. Take the systems offline – completely – until the vulnerabilities were isolated, repaired, and then tested under a variety of attack scenarios.

The second thing I would do would be to encrypt everything on both infected and non-infected networks. And by “everything,” I mean exactly what that word indicates.

With encryption software, no one but you and your intended recipient can read your email messages, text messages, instant messages, etc. You can even encrypt your entire hard disk to protect everything on your PC from prying eyes. If hackers managed to penetrate your network, all they’d see is unintelligible gibberish.

For instance, here’s a link to a message I just wrote to myself in an encrypted format. Can you tell me what it says?

Give up? The message is simply, “Encryption works.”

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No, the PATRIOT Act Didn’t Really Expire

Guest Post by Mark Nestmann

No, the PATRIOT Act Didn’t Really Expire

A few days ago, I was speaking to a client who informed me that “the PATRIOT Act expired last week.” She went on to tell me that as a result, she now felt her electronic communications were safe from warrantless government surveillance.

My client, who I’ll call “Debby,” wasn’t correct in saying that the entire PATRIOT Act expired. It’s true that a small section of the law dealing with the bulk collection of phone records expired November 30. But I can’t blame her for believing this entire ill-conceived law no longer exists.

Over the last few months, apologists for the military-industrial-surveillance complex that dominates US politics have warned that America is at grave risk without the bulk records collection program. No less an authority than CIA director John Brennan testified before Congress that the US has been placed at risk by “political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes.”

You’d think that this comment signified a total dismantling of America’s incredibly sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. But nothing could be further from the truth.

What exactly happened November 30? On that date, the bulk collection by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the call detail records of virtually every phone call made in the US ended. A call detail record doesn’t reveal the content of your phone conversations. But it’s still very revealing, since it shows every phone call made or received, how often you call or receive calls from a particular number, and the duration of each call.

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Former CIA Chief Woolsey: Electrocution Too Good for Snowden. Hang Him!

Guest Post by Daniel McAdams

Former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey has discovered who is really behind the Paris attacks. The blame does not really fall on ISIS, nor on Gulf States that have financed ISIS. Certainly there is no blame on the United States for its decision to destabilize Syria thereby providing fertile breeding ground for Islamist extremists.

No. The fault for Paris falls directly at the feet of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It was Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying that tipped off the ISIS attackers to the need to use encryption in their communications. Thus, argues Woolsey, they could not be tracked by intelligence and were able to commit the heinous act undetected.

“The blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands… because of what he turned loose,” said the former CIA chief.

Because of all this, Snowden is an accomplice to mass murder in addition to being a traitor, argues James Woolsey, and must be put to death immediately. But nothing “humane” like electrocution is good enough for Woolsey. No. Woolsey would “prefer to see him hanged by the neck until he’s dead rather than merely electrocuted.”

There is one big problem with Woolsey’s claims: none of it is true.

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5 Myths Regarding the Paris Terror Attacks

Submitted by George Washington on 11/20/2015 13:03 -0500

As usual, the politicos and talking heads are all talking their own book, using the Paris terror attacks to push their own agendas.

As shown below, they’re spouting nonsense.

Mass Surveillance Won’t Help

The NSA and other spy agencies are pretending that the Paris attacks show that we need more mass surveillance.

But the New York Times correctly points out in a scathing editorial that mass surveillance won’t help to prevent terrorism:

As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

In fact, indiscriminate bulk data sweeps have not been useful. In the more than two years since the N.S.A.’s data collection programs became known to the public, the intelligence community has failed to show that the phone program has thwarted a terrorist attack. Yet for years intelligence officials and members of Congress repeatedly misled the public by claiming that it was effective.

In reality, top security experts agree that mass surveillance makes us MORE vulnerable to terrorists.

Indeed, even the NSA has previously admitted that it’s collecting too MUCH information to stop terror attacks.

Encryption Isn’t What Made Us Vulnerable

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The Loss of All Liberty Is Coming Faster Than You Imagined

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

UK Prime Minister David Cameron reflects the serious problem we have with politicians. Politicians have ZERO respect for our human rights for they only think about how they are going to raid our wealth to pay for their families and retirements at our expense. Cameron actually asked, “In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication we cannot read? My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not’.”

These people are highly dangerous. They only see government as the solution and do not grasp that we have rights. Government wants to eliminate all encryption because they are hunting money. You have a 1000 times greater chance of dying in a car crash than by a terrorist. They use terrorism as the great excuse to collect everything we do.

How did the world function before the internet? Did they intercept every letter in the mail or record every phone call? Why is it that with the internet these people feel they have a right to listen and read everything we communicate? This is EXACTLY the same paranoia displayed by Stalin. Human rights do not simply vanish because we have entered the internet age. We still have rights that governments need to respect, but refuse because they are always desperately in need of more taxes to pay their bankers. The OECD has stated, “Co-operation between tax administrations is critical in the fight against tax evasion and a key aspect of that co-operation is exchange of information.” It’s all about money any nothing else.

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